Rev7
by minmb82
Summary: Rev7


**Chapter 7**

_Daira, 5 Shiaa , 4408, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Sunday, 10 July 2022 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Daira, 5 Shiaa, year 1333 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_Training Range 3 ("The Badlands"), Joint Base Lambda, Karga, Karis _

It was like being in a race car.

The ground under his mechanical legs seemed to narrow in his field of vision until it was a straight line under him, everything to the sides a blur as he raced over a salt flat deep in the Karga Desert with two other Cheetahs hot on his tail and two more in front of him, the dust and salt powder kicked up by their feet threatening to limit his vision. At the speed they were going, he only had maybe eight or nine seconds before they exited the salt flat and returned to the narrow, twisting canyons of the Kedrin Badlands. So if he wanted to make up any ground, this was the easiest place to do it.

This was where it mattered, this was where months of training was going to come into play. Whoever had most acclimated to the quadrupedal movement style of a Cheetah was going to have the biggest advantage here. The other members of the Storm Riders who still hadn't fully embraced running on all fours were slowly falling behind, unable to match the coordination and ground-eating sprint of the other Cheetahs, while those most comfortable with running on all fours were slowly pulling away. Jason was within that pack, along with Tara, Kenli, and Fellan from the Storm Riders, and Sirri, who was doing this training run with them. What they were doing was a race, an old-fashioned race, which ran through the badlands and over the salt flat that stood in the center of it. The salt flat used to be a wide but very shallow saltwater lake, but after the destruction of Karis 1,300 years ago, the lake evaporated to form a relatively flat plain crusted with salt and the hills that had surrounded it had become a series of narrow, twisting passages through the bedrock that had once been the bones of the hills that had ringed the lake. The passages were a great test of a rigger's ability to control his Cheetah, challenging the mecha's agility and the rigger's ability to control his rig.

Third place wasn't nearly good enough for him. He put his nose lower and focused everything on his loping gait, doing everything he could to maximize his speed and efficiency, and that allowed him to nose up between the two leaders, Tara and Fellan. The broken walls of the badlands got bigger and bigger in his forward view as the three of them jockeyed for position, until he realized that his middle position was going to prevent him from getting into a passage…especially since Tara and Fellan were intentionally boxing him in. They were forcing him to slow down to get behind one of them so he could get between the irregular rocky pillars.

If he thought conventionally, anyway.

Instead of slowing down, he sped up even more, inching ahead of the other two Cheetahs, and only at the last possible instant did he slow down, all but slide over the salty crust of the flat as he retracted his traction claws and nearly went over his own front legs, then planted his back legs and jumped almost straight up. Tara and Fellan didn't see it because they entered the passages to either side of the rocky pillar, and the other two may have caught a glimpse of his Cheetah slamming into the side of the pillar feet first, his traction claws now fully extended. Those claws found purchase in the rocky wall, and he used his momentum to drive himself upwards, tearing chunks of the reddish-brown rock away from the cliff face as he started scaling it.

He'd just went through his extreme vertical terrain training yesterday, and those lessons were fresh in his mind.

The tops of the rocky mesas of the badlands weren't flat, but they were flat enough for him to see the goal on the far side of it, the operations building about 7 kathra away, built on the other side of the formation. He landed on the top of the mesa and surged forward, leaping over a chasm to the next formation, and he set himself on a direct course, a straight line that the others could not follow—

Almost everyone. In his rear display, Sirri's Cheetah vaulted up and onto the top, and it immediately turned towards him and started after him. _[You're not getting away with cheating, Uncle Jason!]_ she barked at him as she vaulted over a chasm, trying to catch up with him.

_[They never said we _couldn't_ run over the top,]_ he replied cheekily as he found a smooth pace that allowed him to jump from mesa to mesa without breaking stride, allowing him to run with some impressive speed over the top of the badlands. They weren't allowed to use grav pods for this exercise, which forced them to concentrate on their footwork.

_[It's still cheating!]_

_ [If you haven't figured out by now that I'm an outrageous cheater, then you don't pay very much attention, girl,]_ he replied tauntingly as he opened up more distance between them. Since he was running in a straight line, it only took him a minute and a half to run across the top of the maze of narrow passages below, then slid nearly to a stop and started down the cliff on the far side. It was a 137 shakra high cliff, the height of a 15 story building, and far too high for both the legs and the ground to be able to handle the impact of trying to jump off of it without using grav pods to soften the landing…and he wasn't allowed to use grav pods for this exercise. So he instead half scampered, half slid down the cliff face, hit the ground at the bottom, and stretched out into a full sprint, heading for the finish line. Behind him, he saw Sirri get down from the top and chase after him, and seconds after she did so, Tara emerged from the passage and opened into a full sprint as well.

But it was too late. Jason had too wide of lead. He sprinted over the finish line nearly two seconds before Sirri and four seconds before Tara. The other 45 members of the Storm Riders, both active and reserves, rumbled over the finish line in twos and threes...but all of them finished before the target time. That meant that all 47 of them passed the exercise.

_[How the fuck did you get in front of me, Jayce?]_ Tara demanded over company STG.

_[I went up and over,]_ he replied jauntily as he slowed to a nearly prancing walk, heading for the outdoor staging area. _[That' s what you get for trying to drive me into the cliff, woman. I just went up the cliff and over the top.]_

_ [Well, that was pretty clever.]_

_ [Clever is a job requirement for 3D,]_ he replied playfully as he entered the staging area and headed for his maintenance bay.

Half an hour later, he got the news he wanted to hear. He, the other Storm Riders, and Sirri had officially passed the Cheetah basic operations training course, and they could now start training on the combat operations training course. From now on, they'd be training in the special tactics that Cheetahs used on a battlefield and with the mecha's weapons and pod systems, which would include learning how to pilot the rig when it had pods equipped. Pods changed the operational characteristics of the mecha far more than other heavy mecha, so they had to learn to run and move with unequal weight distribution across the mecha's body. When there was more weight on the front legs than the back legs, or vice versa, it changed how the rigger had to move the mecha to keep it stable. That was why the mecha would have ballast units to place to try to equalize the weight distribution as much as possible if the mecha only had either shoulder or hip pods mounted.

Just another aspect of why Cheetahs were more difficult to pilot than bipedal mecha, but it would be worth it in the end.

Sirri punched him in the arm when they left the debriefing room, making him laugh and put his arm around her. _You'll get another chance at me when we start doing the wargame simulations, silly girl,_ he sent teasingly.

_Finally!_ she sent happily. _I'm so looking forward to the combat training course!_

_ Methinks you like the Cheetahs better than a Titan or Valkyrie._

_ Not really, but it is a whole lot of fun._

_ Shh, this isn't supposed to be fun,_ he protested with a slight smile.

They chatted on the way back to Karsa, and when they got there, Sirri gathered up Aria and Yuri and they headed for the shopping district for a little teenage girl time—Sirri _loved_ being able to move around on Karis without needing security escorting her everywhere, though members of the Imperial Guard were always close by in case they were needed—and Jason went up to his office and caught up on the status reports that had piled up while he was over on Karga. It had been two days since Jason had sicced Zaa on the Medical Service, but the infiltrator they sent in had yet to recover any valuable intel yet. The Director of the Medical Service was behind some impressive security for her just being a doctor, which had slowed down the Kimdori's attempts to get anything out of her. But Banlia had certainly made sure that Jason knew how she felt in a call she made to him yesterday. She (correctly) blamed him for the hack on their mainframe, and she made some pretty nasty threats for someone that was supposed to be about healing people. She threatened to recall the entire Karinne branch of the Medical Service…which amused Jason, because the Medical Service here was loyal to the _house_, not _her_. There were no Imperium doctors, nurses, or administrative staff in the Karinne Medical Service, all of its members were Karinnes. If Banlia used that nuclear option, she'd be in for quite a shock when the Medical Service here on Karis simply went back to being autonomous.

Songa had built her Medical Service the Karinne way from the beginning.

A bigger status report was a viddy that Dahnai recorded of Kaen chasing, and then being chased by, his tabi Neena through one of the parlors in the summer palace. Kaen was proving to be a handful for Saelle and Evin, nearly Kimdori in his energy and curiosity and absolutely fearless. He got into absolutely everything, requiring constant supervision (which he got thanks to the Imperial Guard), and also requiring them to keep him more or less isolated for now.

Kaen had been full of surprises, and the biggest of which was that he expressed at the age of _three_. And just like his big sister, he was a _listener_.

Dahnai couldn't be prouder of her son. Any child that expressed that early meant that he was going to be a prodigy when it came to telepathy, and him being a boy wasn't going to change that fact. He may not have the raw power of girls who expressed at the same age, but he'd still be damn strong, one of the most powerful male telepaths in the Imperium. And the fact that he was also a listener was just the cream at the top of the bottle. What they didn't know yet was if he'd inherited his mother's telekinetic power. Mrar said it was too soon for her to determine if he had or not, but she was very optimistic. As strong as Dahnai was, and the fact that strong TK ran through her family line, it was a very good chance that Kaen would also be telekinetic.

Four year olds aren't exactly known for their tact or ability to keep a secret, so Kaen was currently sequestered by the Imperial Guard so they could both train him how to control his talent and also teach him not to blurt out everything he overheard while he was eavesdropping on private sendings. It was even more problematic because Kaen knew that his mother and sister were Generations, having picked that up before anyone realized he was a listener. He didn't entirely understand what it meant, but that one reason alone was enough for them to keep Kaen separated from just about anyone that didn't know that secret. It was why Saelle and Evin had been on Karis for nearly a full year, and Dahnai came over much more than normal to both keep tabs on her son and also stay close to Saelle, who was her best friend. Dahnai was spending one takir a month on Karis, but when she came here, Kaen was moved to the strip to keep him away from the _siann_. She had to come here to see him and Saelle, so she was a fairly regular houseguest on the strip.

This was unusual behavior, and it had been noticed. Yila in particular was working hard to unravel the mystery of why Dahnai was keeping Kaen isolated, and she'd been underhanded enough to try to talk Dara into worming that information out of the strip kids. That was because Dara spent nearly as much time on Karis as Dahnai did. Yila's evil plot to marry her brat off to one of Jason's boys was showing some results, because Dara and Zach were nearly inseparable. Zach, like Rann, was quickly approaching puberty, and Jason had the sinking feeling that when he finally got there, started showing interest in girls, he might seriously consider asking Jason to betroth him to Dara. Dara was 14, approaching marrying age by Faey noble tradition, but the betrothal would lock her down for Zach and make sure Yila didn't marry her off to someone else.

What made it dangerous in Jason's mind was that Dara had just started puberty herself. That wasn't unusual for a Faey girl, who could start puberty anywhere from age 15 to age 12, so Dara was only just a little bit ahead of the average age for a girl. Dara's infatuation with Zach was going to turn into something major very quickly, because she was already looking at him with hunger in her eyes. Dara's puberty might very well entice Zach into asking for a betrothal, since she'd be chasing him with far more determination than she was now.

Zach couldn't quite wrap his mind around the fact that Yila was trying to marry Dara off to _him_, so she'd never in a million years betroth her to another boy…unless it was a ploy to force Zach to make a move.

He was more or less resigned to the idea of it…and truth be told, he did like Dara. What he didn't like was the string tied around the girl that led back to her mother. It would be far harder cutting Dara loose from Yila than it had been to cut Shya loose from Dahnai, because Shya had hated being an Imperial Princess and she was quite eager to embrace her new life and the rules that came with it. Yila would be an eternal whisper in Dara's ear, and if Jason didn't cut that string quickly, it could cause both him and the house some very real problems.

He had no idea where the time went. It seemed like just yesterday, his oldest kids were building sand castles on the beach, and didn't come up to his hip. Now they were on the verge of puberty—Sora had just had her first menstrual cycle, so she _was_ in puberty now—and very soon, he was going to have to deal with a pack of teenagers with raging pubescent hormones that were going to shake his moral foundations to their core.

Thinking about that, about his little girl becoming a woman…it made him feel _old_, for the first time in his life.

And it was going to be harder for him than he was willing to admit. He may be married to a Faey, and live in a more or less Faey society, but he was _Terran_. Parts of Faey society, he'd been able to adapt to without much trouble, like the Faey attitude towards sex. They didn't hide sex from kids because they saw nothing inherently wrong or shameful about it. To them, it was a natural part of daily life, and they didn't attach any religious mores to it. Nowhere in the Faey religion did their gods dictate how Faey were supposed to behave when it came to their sexuality, which was why Faey society was so accepting of homosexuality. There was no religious basis for them to believe it was wrong, leaving them to accept the science that said that homosexuality was a part of the natural order, that homosexuals were born that way…and besides, most Faey weren't entirely straight to begin with, both men and women. Jason had adjusted to the idea of his kids seeing sex just about everywhere they looked, but when they started partaking in it themselves, like Aria had, he knew it was going to push the boundaries of his ability to adapt and accept a culture very different from the one in which he was raised. It was one thing for them to see it, but it was an entirely different thing for them to do it.

Children in Terran society weren't supposed to get involved in sex until they were adults, but in Faey society, they were encouraged to explore their sexuality early, even the boys were. Since they saw it as a natural part of life, they saw no reason to deny it to those who were physically old enough to engage in it. While there were social conventions in place that prevented Faey adults from having sex with teenagers, there were no such conventions preventing teenagers from engaging in sex with each other. To the contrary, they were actively encouraged to engage in it by their parents, by Faey society as a whole. And now that his kids were reaching that age, he would have to step back and allow them to do things that his father would have _murdered_ him for if he'd have been the one doing it.

Of course he did it anyway, but the difference was, he hid what he was doing from his father, where here, his kids wouldn't have to hide what they were doing from their parents.

He'd had years to prepare for this, but it seemed like it hadn't been long enough, if his reaction to Aria's "_active_" social life was any indication.

He wasn't _that_ old. He was only 35, he still had some of the best years of his life in front of him—34, he was _34_ damn it, he was _not_ adding a year to his age like the Faey did—and the advances of Faey medicine would keep him active and spry well into his 80s so long as he took care of himself. But no matter how long his life may be, he couldn't help but feel the weight of the years when he thought of the idea that in just a few years, his oldest boys and girls wouldn't be children anymore. And that couldn't help but make a parent start feeling the marching of the years, start feeling that they weren't young anymore.

But, if Rann and his eldest siblings approaching adulthood made him feel old, then Jon and Julia made him feel young. He watched a viddy feed of the two of them playing down in the living room with Sanjira and Hann, Maya and Vell's 3 year old son, as they waited for dinner. Tika was a toddler now along with the twins, but they were no longer then youngest generation of kids on the strip. Maya, Min, Sheleese, Lyn, and Temika all had infants, Temika and Mike's son Andre only one month old, representing the next wave of children to add to the gaggle of kids that lived on the strip. Two of the other women on the strip were very pregnant, Bryn and Myra, so there would be more babies added to that wave soon.

For the first time, none of the kids in the newest wave were Jason's. He still strayed from Jyslin from time to time, but not as much as he used to…but that was mainly because many of the strip girls that chased him were now either married or had long-standing relationships with men that would become marriages as soon as the pair stopped dicking around and finalized things. The only truly single girls on the strip now were Myri and Kumi, and that was because Myri was married to her job and Kumi was _never_ going to marry, because she felt it would cramp her decadent lifestyle. All the other girls had found husbands or steady boyfriends over the last three years, even Aura and Yana, and most of them were Generations. Jenn was just the first in a wave of Generation men that moved from the outside of the fence to the inside of the fence. Jason had expected that most of the girls would lose interest in him when they had men of their own, and he'd been proven right.

But there were exceptions. Aura was now married to a Generation, Herran, but Jason's relationship with her was so strong that it was nearly in _amu_ territory. Most people called Aura his _amu dorai_, even though it wasn't really like that. Jason didn't consider it _amu_ because that required romantic love, and their relationship wasn't really about that. They were just very, very good friends who were sexually attracted to each other, and in Faey society, they were allowed to explore that attraction without getting slaughtered by jealous spouses.

But, his relationship with Yana, _that_ was _amu_, at least from Yana's side. Jason didn't feel the same way for Yana she did for him, but he always honored her feelings by being there for her and being a very good friend to her. Yana still hadn't married, but she did have a boyfriend now, one of the younger Generation men named Vann. And while she did love Vann, and was going to marry him, she still harbored love in her heart for Jason. Jason felt that in a few more years, after she was married and had a husband of her own in her life for a while, her feelings for him would slowly change into something like what he had with Aura, a deep friendship with some sexual attraction mixed in with it. But until they did, he would be there for her in the ways she needed him to be.

Jason hoped none of his boys found themselves in his situation. He sometimes felt like he was being unfair to the women in his life because there seemed to be way too many of them. But, he'd also felt that way for about the last ten years, so there was that.

He blinked and got his mind back on business, but was distracted again almost immediately. _[Totally unfair, baby, you finished the training course first!]_ Symone complained over the biogenic network. _[You were supposed to let me finish first!]_

_ [Stop playing around then, woman,]_ he teased in reply. The Renegades, being an Army exomech squadron, were going to be assigned Cheetahs, so the company was undergoing Cheetah training. They'd started five days after Jason did, but the entire company had performed so well that they were threatening to graduate up to the combat section of the course first. _[Aren't you doing the race today?]_

_ [This afternoon,]_ she told him. _[You pulled strings to get in this morning, didn't you?]_

_ [Of course not, you goofy thing,]_ he retorted. _[I swear, woman, you have the weirdest mood swings when you're pregnant.]_

She returned pure amusement over the connection. Symone had been pregnant for only about three months, so she was still considered on active combat status. She hadn't even started to show yet. _[Sirri run with you?]_

_ [Yeah, and she passed with the rest of us. Why do you ask?]_

_ [She just cancelled running with us.]_

_ [She's out in town with Aria and Yuri,]_ he told her. _[No doubt celebrating.]_

_ [Boy hunting is more like it,]_ Symone thought with a dirty undertone to her thought. _[Too bad Sirri can't invoke Imperial law until she's Empress. Trelle, would I ever love to have the power to make any man I want get between my legs.]_

_ [I can do without the open fantasizing over the network,]_ he replied, the current of his thought making her even more amused.

_[You are still such a prude...and it still turns me on as much now as it did back then,]_ she teased._. [Nothing's hotter to a Faey woman that conquering a defiant man.]_ That was certainly true enough, it was why a man saying no to a woman was actually a form of flirtation, and about the fastest way a man could secure a woman's interest in him.

He bantered with his _amu dozei_ for a few more moments, then broke it off when a report hit his panel. It was a message from Rita Estobar, sent over the CO mail system to his character, which Cyvanne had routed to his home office panel. Yesterday, she and Kevin Ball no doubt had quite a happy shock when couriers dropped off certified vouchers to them that were worth C417,495 each, which was the money they should have received over the last 14 years through the monthly stipend program. Both of them had never signed up for the program, and why they never did was something else that Jason's office was investigating. It seemed that all the farm workers who had "eyes only" classification in the Medical Service had not been enrolled in the stipend program. The records showed that Rita Estobar had applied for the stipend about three months after it was put into place, no doubt hearing about it from another farm survivor, but her application was denied.

As was the application of every other "eyes only" farm survivor.

The more he dug into this, the more worried he was getting. Something…something big had gone on over there, and it seemed like all of this was a coordinated attempt by both the U.N. and the Medical Service to hide it…but he had the feeling it was for different reasons. The DFM was hiding it because someone in the department was stealing that money, but the Medical Service just had to have another reason. It couldn't be as simple as embezzlement, not for them to go to the extreme of locking that data behind top-tier security clearances and behind a "kill switch" feature that would usually be found in an intelligence operation's mainframe.

What he was seeing now was a perfect example of that mystifying cooperation. It was just too damn convenient that the "eyes only" farm survivors seemed to be the ones that the DFM worked the hardest to keep from getting any benefits.

It was more than Miaari and Zaa hunting this down now. Kiaari was also involved, and she was understandably furious that she had never heard anything about any of this. She considered it a failure that she hadn't heard anything about this, and Jason felt her self-incrimination was a bit misplaced. This wasn't very big in the scale of things that went on over on Terra, it involved just a few people that Kiaari's pack almost never interacted with in the pursuance of their duties, so it had slipped through the cracks of her operation. She couldn't keep track of _everything_, but Kimdori were big on blaming themselves when things didn't go perfectly. So, it was a particularly incensed Kiaari seeking to regain her honor as Terra's Gamekeeper that was rampaging across Terra at the moment, and that motivation was no doubt going to produce some results.

Kiaari was also a bit miffed at him that he hadn't brought this to her in the first place, but she well knew that Jason tended to go to Miaari first whenever he needed information.

So far, they hadn't gotten very far in their investigation. Zaa's operative hadn't yet gotten close enough to Banlia to extract any info, Siyhaa was still hunting down the financial paper trail, and Miaari was still gathering information from Terra's governmental computer system to try to figure out what was going on. But, Jason did feel that they'd gotten at least a little progress in the form of paying Rita and Kevin the money they deserved. And when he found out who else had been denied their rightful money, he would rectify that injustice…and then take that money out of the hides of whoever stole it. For now, it was coming out of Karinne's budget, but he would get it back. Oh, would he _ever_ get it back.

He had to smile as he read the letter, as Rita thanked him about fifty times for the money, and promised that she would use it wisely. That was what made this job worth it, in his opinion, when he was in a position to help someone else, and when he made someone happy. Besides, he felt at least a fleeting kinship with the farm survivors, and he'd felt that he'd been remiss in his duties to make sure they were okay since all this mess started.

He was about to contact Chirk to make a change to his schedule when Meya's face appeared on a flat hologram over his desk. "What's up, Meya?" he asked as he heard the door open. Amber padded up to his chair, and he picked her up and put her in his lap.

"Just to keep you up to date, we just had a near miss with a mapping ship in Mostara B," she said without preamble. Mostara B was a small globular galaxy on the edge of their side of the home galactic cluster. Along with Mostara A, they were the most distant galaxies of those that orbited the Milky Way. "It jumped into a system to map it and almost immediately came under attack."

"How? Aren't they jumping in at the edge to do scans before they move into the system?"

"Yes, but the civilization that was there jumped a warship to its location within 20 seconds of it dropping into normal space," she answered. "They have real time jump engines."

"Oh. Any damage?"

"No, the attacking ship's weapons couldn't penetrate our shields. It managed to escape in mode one, and the attacker didn't follow."

"That's good. Just mark that area as off limits and have them explore a different part of Mostara B," he said. "But send a couple of hyperspace probes in so we can map out how big that civilization is, so we don't trespass again."

"Put them on the do not contact list?"

"Yup. If they're that trigger happy, we stay the hell away from them."

He thought that was the last he'd hear of that problem, at least until just before dinner. Meya contacted him again while he was playing with Jon and Julia. _[They're back, Jayce,]_ Meya communed to him from KES headquarters. _[The scout ship _Baistara_ just reported a brush with a ship of the same design as the one that attacked our mapping ship a few hours ago. Ships in that galaxy have been keeping their sensors tuned to catch real time jumps, so they saw it coming and had time to get their defensive systems up.]_

_ [Did it attack as soon as it came out of hyperspace?]_

_ [Yeah. Whoever this is, they must have a good sensor network to detect the scout ship. It was exploring an uninhabited system a good 370 light years from where the mapping ship was attacked The scout ship took fire just before it retreated from the system.]_

_ [Whoever they are might be a galaxy-spanning civilization,]_ Jason speculated. _[Mostara B isn't all that large as galaxies go, and this civilization has real-time engines. It would only take them about 35 minutes to jump from one end of the galaxy to the other.]_

_ [I'm going to pull all our exploration assets out of Mostara B for now,]_ Meya told him. _[There are plenty of other galaxies to explore where we're not being shot at.]_

_ [Works for me, do it,]_ he confirmed. _[Send in some more hyperspace probes to gather some generic data about the galaxy, then we'll be done there and never go back.]_

_ [Already did that. They should be done in about ten hours.]_

_ [On the ball I see.]_

_ [Always.]_

Jason thought that that was the last he'd hear of Mostara B, but he was wrong. Cyrsi woke him up about an hour before the alarm went off. _[We have a situation, Jason,]_ she told him after pestering him enough to wake him up.

_[What now?]_

_[A large fleet of warships from Mostara B came out into flat space where the _Adralix _was sitting, collecting data from the probes we sent in to the galaxy,_ she reported. The _Adralix_ was a Vanguard class scout ship, and was the "flag" vessel for exploration operations in Mostara A and Mostara B. _[There were enough of them to force the ship to use aggressive tactics to clear a lane to escape.]_

_ [Why didn't the ship retreat immediately when they saw them coming?]_

_ [They had the engines down to do scheduled maintenance,]_ she answered. _[They didn't get them back up until nearly twenty seconds after the alien fleet dropped into normal space. Jason, the enemy fleet tried to capture the ship. That was why the _Adralix_ had to get very aggressive, it can't jump or use mode one when it's grappled.]_

_ [Can't blame them there.]_

_ [What Meya wanted you to know was that the crew was attacked_ telepathically_ as well. The enemy had multiple high power, well trained telepaths,]_ she told him. _[If not for the Faey on the ship, they would have been taken over.]_

_ [Get that ship back here and have the entire crew checked over by mindbenders. Let's make sure the enemy didn't break anyone and plant any post-contact suggestions.]_

_ [Meya already ordered it. The ship should be back at Kosigi in about forty minutes.]_

_ [Good. Any damage or injuries?]_

_ [None to the _Adralix_, but it did significant damage to two ships making its escape. Enemy casualties are unknown.]_

He barely paused. _[We're completely withdrawing from that region. Have Meya pull all assets from both Mostara A and Mostara B, including hyperspace probes. If they're willing to come out into flat space to get at our ships, I don't want our ships within a twenty day jump of either Mostara galaxy. There's a whole universe out there to explore, so I'm not going to quibble over two small galaxies. If this race is that determined to keep us away, we'll oblige them.]_

_ [I'll tell her,]_ Cyrsi answered.

He laid back down and yawned, then scrubbed his face, pondering if it was worth it to go back to sleep for another 50 minutes or just get up. The balcony doors were open, letting in a salty, cool breeze that livened up the bedroom. Jyslin was over at Tim's tonight, so it was Symone sleeping in the bed beside him. She snuggled up to him almost instinctively in her sleep. He closed his eyes and thought about it for a few minutes, then sighed and extricated himself from Symone and got up. He went down to the kitchen, where Ayama was already awake and getting breakfast started. _Isn't this a little early, even for you?_ Jason challenged as he came in. Ayama almost immediately went over to the brewer and poured him a cup of coffee. _Thanks,_ he nodded as she handed it to him.

_I promised Shya I'd make quiche this morning. That has some prep time,_ she replied. _Besides, I was already up. Now, why are you up? It's only six._

_ Work woke me up, not worth it to go back to sleep,_ he answered. _You guys decided where you're going for vacation?_

_ Sarga, but we haven't decided where yet,_ she answered as she started chopping vegetables.

_No skiing this time?_

_ I'm sick of skiing. I told Surin if he takes me skiing one more time, I'd have you melt all the snow on the planet._

He laughed. _I'm not sure that would be a very good idea,_ he grinned.

_I don't care._

_ You should talk to Merra. She lived on Sarga for over a year, so no doubt she'll know the best places to go._

_ We did. We know generally where we're going, we just haven't decided on which town or hotel yet._

_ Ah. And how excited is Sanni?_

_ She can't sit still,_ she replied with amusement. _That has to be Surin in her._

_ I'd say that's a good thing. The less of _you_ there is in her, the better she's going to turn out._

Ayama gave him a long, direct stare.

_Keep trying, I stare down galactic rulers on a daily basis,_ he replied cheekily, giving her a grin.

_You'd better eat at work today, Jason,_ she threatened, which made him laugh.

Despite the threat, Jason got an early breakfast and decided to get an early jump on today's paperwork. He went up his home office and pulled the queue off Chirk's panel, and managed to get nearly half of his paperwork done before the kids started waking up. Aria was almost always the first up because she worked out before school, but a steady, heavy rain outside sent her over to the guard barracks and the gym they had there. Usually, the girls woke up next, and someone would have to go roust Rann and Shya out of bed not long after that. Today was only a little different because both Danelle and Sirri were in the house. Danelle was in her usual bedroom—she had her own bedroom in the house—and Sirri had stayed over rather than go back to the summer palace, given how late she and Aria got in last night. The Crown Princess wandered into his home office while he was working through his paperwork, yawning as she opened the door and padded in, wearing what attractive Faey teenagers usually wore to bed…nothing. Jason did spare a slightly appreciative glance at her unclad form—she really was just as sexy as her mother—as she padded up to the desk and flopped into the guest chair on the far side. _[Morning, Uncle Jason.]_

_ [Why aren't you over at the gym with Aria?]_

_ [I'm about to go over. Just wanted to let you know that Aria had the same dream last night, but she didn't find out anything new. Same dream, same result.]_

_ [She's been keeping me informed,]_ he nodded. _[But I appreciate you telling me.]_

_ [You aren't bailing on the training today, are you?]_

_ [Not planning to,]_ he answered. _[And you'd better get moving. Don't you have a training session with Mrar this morning? You know what she'll do to you if you're late.]_

Sirri laughed aloud. _[She doesn't respect my title at all.]_

_ [That little Pai can tie you in a knot whenever she pleases. She has no reason to respect you,]_ Jason replied lightly. _[You mastered light manipulation yet?]_

_ [Still working on it. It's really hard,]_ she fretted. Sirri had surprised just about everyone, both those who knew she was a Generation and those who didn't, with her telekinetic ability. Even without a gestalt boosting her ability, she was an exceptionally strong telekinetic, able to lift nearly 90 konn with her power. That was more than her own body weight, meaning she could effectively levitate using her ability. She was stronger than her mother, stronger than Jason, stronger than just about every other TK on Karis except for Samin, Zachary, and a few others…and not all of those were Generations. Because of her immense base power, she was an absolute monster when boosted by a gestalt, and Mrar had spent the last three years training her in how to harness and control that power.

And the Imperium knew about most of it. Dahnai didn't hide Sirri's rare gift, was damn proud that her daughter was such a prodigy when it came to TK. The whole Imperium knew that Sirri was one of the most powerful Faey telekinetics alive, and that she took personalized training with the Pai to fully develop that power.

But the real surprise had been Kellin. He was just barely stronger than Dahnai in TK, but he knew far more applications of it than she did because he had a natural aptitude for TK training. Mrar called him a natural, someone that just instinctively understood how TK worked, and that let him pull off tricks of skill beyond most others. Dahnai had accepted this fact with at least a modicum of grace, though she secretly fumed a bit that her husband was better at her at something…at _anything_, truth be told, it stung at her Faey woman's pride to be beaten by a man.

_[I'm sure you'll get it soon. It's a fun skill to have. You can do some neat things with it.]_

_ [I know, that's why I'm working on it so hard. At least when I'm not recovering from a long night of partying,]_ she grinned.

_[Change the subject,]_ he warned. He didn't much care what Sirri did, but he did care what she talked Aria into doing along with her.

She laughed brightly. _[I'm all grown up now, Uncle Jason, I get to do all the fun things,]_ she teased, even being going so far as to cup one of her ample teenage breasts. Despite only being 16, Sirri looked almost fully grown…and the fact that she wasn't hinted that she was going to be as tall as her mother. Maybe even taller. But in the ways that Faey girls _wanted_ to be grown, Sirri had more or less already got there. She was 16—15 in reality—but she looked more like she was 18 or 19. She'd started puberty earlier than most Faey girls, and had had three years to develop into the beautiful and well-curved young woman she was now. _[And one of the benefits of being the Crown Princess is tons of guys want you. I let Aria have the leftovers.] _

_ [Girl, I'm about to spank you,]_ he threatened, which made her laugh again.

_[I need to get over to the gym anyway,]_ she grinned, standing up. _[See you after lunch, Uncle Jason.]_ She then sauntered her way out of his office, making sure to wiggle her butt for his viewing pleasure.

Seriously, she was a lot less annoying before she hit puberty. But that was Faey society. Sirri was 16, having just celebrated her birthday two takirs ago, and she was the Crown Princess to boot, so she had every right in both Faey law and custom to hunt playmates…and not all of them were her age. And she was also right that her celebrity would make her very appealing to boys and young men, who could crow to their friends that they slept with _royalty_.

He'd bet that the Faey would act entirely differently if it was much easier for teenage girls to get pregnant. The same mechanism that made it almost unheard of for Faey women to conceive quickly after giving birth was also at work in pubescent and recently post-pubescent teenage girls, which allowed them to monkey around with very little fear of getting pregnant. A Faey woman didn't really have a good chance to get pregnant until she was nearly 25…which was the reason Jason suspected that 25 was the official age of majority in Faey society.

They'd better feel lucky that biological quirk was there, given that virtually no Faey girl would use birth control of any kind.

Maybe it was time to marry Sirri off. Maybe having a husband in the house would curtail some of her more predatory inclinations.

Probably not. Besides, as the Crown Princess, Sirri wouldn't marry until after she took the throne, and it would be to the man of her choice. The Empress did not marry for political gain, she married purely for personal preference.

Today was Daira, which meant that the kids didn't have school, Jason didn't usually go into the office (though he did clear his in-box from home), and it also meant it was match day for the Paladins. The Paladins hadn't won the Empress' Crown since their second, back-to-back win two years ago, but they had established themselves as one of the major powers in the IBL despite falling short the last two years. They were in the playoffs every year now, and they got deep into them every year. Two years ago, they were beaten in the finals by the Immortals (which made Dahnai almost insufferable for six months), and last year they were beaten in the semifinals by the Jerama Warlords. The Tigers had won the crown last year, beating the Warlords in the crown match. That made them the defending champions, a fact that had made Yila quite mellow the last few months. Finally getting her title had taken a huge burden off her back. Today was an away game, with the Paladins traveling to Kaidora II to take on the Executioners. It wasn't a division match up, but in the IBL, every game _mattered_. Jyslin didn't go to away games in person due to Aya's security, but she attended every single one of them through a moleculartronic bionoid that she kept on the team's transport. As was usual for Jyslin on a match day, she was up early and merged to her bionoid almost as soon as she finished breakfast, traveling with the team. She spent every away game not in a skybox or as a guest of the home team's owner, but on the sidelines with her team, cheering them on.

Today was an important match for the Paladins. If they won, they clenched a guaranteed playoff spot, so no way was Jyslin not going to be there with the team for a match this big. It had become almost the usual for the Paladins to clinch this early in the season, and the rest of the season would be about making sure their seed in the playoff bracket was as high as possible.

Jyslin was one of the most active owners in the IBL, and Jason felt that her personal attention and her passion for the Paladins was one reason why they'd become such a success. She did everything right in his opinion, and the biggest thing she did right was to understand that she wasn't an expert on bachi. Her front office and her head coach were the experts, and she was always very careful about getting their informed opinions for every decision she made. She was the boss, she made the decisions and she signed the checks, but she never made a decision that wasn't backed by consulting with multiple advisors and a lot of research. Though, after running the team for six years, Jyslin could very well be considered an expert on bachi now. But despite her years of experience, she still made sure to consult with people who had far more experience than she did about the running of the team..

She ran it on her own now. Frinia still owned ten percent of the team, but her advanced age had caused her to retire from active participation in the team. She did come to the matches from time to time, when she felt up to it, but she had turned running the Paladins completely over to Jyslin after the Paladins won their first crown.

Usually, Jason would have attended a match this important, but not today. He didn't want to be committed to anything while he was waiting for more information about what was going on with Terra and the Medical Service, so he would stay home and watch the match on viddy with the kids…and with Jyslin.

She was skilled enough with merging as a Generation to have two splits strong enough to operate a bionoid while her real body was engaged with other tasks, as long as one of them, her passive split, was sitting or laying down and didn't do anything too complex or strenuous to break the merge. She'd worked hard on her splitting skill after Jason managed to finally figure out Kellin's trick, and he'd gotten to the point where he could do just about anything except fight from his passive split. It had taken him nearly three years to master the extremely difficult trick, but he'd done it. He could now perform light physical activity with his real body or a second bionoid while merged to a bionoid. He could walk around, talk, engage in complex physical tasks so long as they didn't become too intense. If they went over the line, became so intense that they dominated his attention, he would lose the merge. But still, it was a trick that mightily impressed most of the other Generations, and now many of them were trying to learn it too. What Jason and Kellin could do with their real bodies or a second bionoid while merged to another bionoid was very, very impressive.

And Faey being Faey, they were too competitive to allow only Jason and Kellin to be able to do that trick.

Jyslin was learning the trick now as well, and she was to where she could hold a conversation and move her arms around while merged to a bionoid, but she couldn't do anything intricate, strenuous, or required too much of her attention. She couldn't walk or move too much while she was sitting down, but she could do it.

So, when match time came around, the kids were gathered around her real body as she sat on the couch in the main living room, and a hologram of her bionoid was on the viddy as she walked out onto the pitch with her team. Jason joined them just as they went through the pre-game ceremonies, sitting down beside Jyslin. It wasn't only family however. Kreel was over from Grimjar to hang out, and they had a slightly rarer visitor as well in High Princess Mrri of the Pai.

Over the last three years, Mrri had almost been a _pest_. Despite being the first in line for the Pai throne, Mrri was, by profession, an astrophysicist, and she had been utterly enthralled by Confederation and Karinne technology since the day she came to Karis to negotiate a treaty to allow the Confederation to put an interdictor in her home system. Since joining the Confederation, her main mission, straight from her father, was to integrate Confederation technology into Pai society as quickly as possible. She was the one that was in charge of the modernization effort on Paian, and Jason had to admit, she'd done an outstanding job so far.

The Karinnes and the Pai had become very close over the last three years for more reasons than just modernizing Pai industry. Since Pai telepaths could hear communion, the two empires had done some in-depth research into their ability, and it had produced some interesting results. Where all Pai telepaths could hear organic communion, about 20% of them had also learned to actively commune themselves, able to send via communion as well as hear it, and Mrri was one of them. Mrar was another. That all but made them Generations themselves, only lacking the ability to have their power boosted by a gestalt and the ability to split, which did choke down their commune ability somewhat due to having much more limited bandwidth in their commune. The Karinnes had taught the Pai telepaths that could commune many of their tricks, including the ability to merge without using a jack, even though Mrri had one—regular telepathy just didn't have enough "bandwidth" to handle a merge—and they'd learned much about communion and the Pai over the last few years. They'd leaned that it was the Pai's unique brain architecture that gave them the ability to hear commune, an architecture almost exactly identical to a Generation's, and those with an architecture most similar to a Generation who were the ones that could actively commune. That made the Pai and the Generations almost related, in a bizarre way, and that fact had drawn the two disparate species together over the years.

It did fit, in an odd way. Most every Generation that had trained under Mrar just _adored_ her. There was something about Pai that _clicked_ with both Generations and Kimdori.

The fact that Pai could hear commune had required the Karinnes to invest some trust into the Pai, and that trust had not been misplaced over the last three years. The Pai knew some of the Karinnes' secrets, but they kept those secrets out of respect for their relationship. But, it did mean that only Pai that passed Miaari's screening were allowed to come to Karis, since they were all a potential security risk.

As a result of both her work and her participation in the commune research project, Mrri had been one of the more frequent visitors to Karis over the last three years, frequent enough to establish lasting friendships with many people on Karis. She was here almost every other takir, either doing research with the communion team or trying to talk the Karinnes into this project or that which would modernize Paian's infrastructure faster. Truth be told, she was quite well liked by just about everyone, having wormed her way into his inner circle much the way Kreel and Enva did. And the other members of Jason's inner circle of Confederation rulers liked her just as much as he did. She was solidly entrenched in their clique within the Council, joining Zaa, Dahnai, Sk'Vrae, Kreel, and Enva, and to a lesser extent Shakizarr, Brayrak Kruu, Magran, Grayhawk, and Ethikk.

There was an aspect of Mrri that appealed to almost everyone. Mrri was adorable, but she also had a wonderful personality that made everyone like her. She was generous, kind, and had a rich sense of humor, but she was also one of the smartest people Jason had ever known. She was young enough to know how to have fun, she loved to play like a little kid sometimes, but her scientist's training and exceptional intelligence made her a brisk conversationalist. She was well trained in statecraft by her father, Mrrshan, and that gave her the ability to navigate the murky political environment of the council and the _siann_ with grace and style. But the one thing that Jason never forgot was that her Adorable Cute and Fuzzy Highness was exceptionally dangerous _because_ of her intelligence and her charisma, and he respected her nearly as much as he liked her.

_You're almost late, Jason,_ Mrri chastised. Though she usually communed with Generations, Kreel being here restricted her to sending.

Mrri was one of the very few non-Generations that knew Jyslin's and Shya's secret, that they were Generations. She'd found out quite by accident with Jyslin, and found out about Shya because the girl had very little self control around Rann. But she had kept their secret, proving herself to Jason and the Karinnes. However, she didn't know that Dahnai, Kellin, Miyai, and Sirri were Generations.

_I like to avoid all the silly ceremonies and sit down just in time to see the action,_ he replied as he sat down beside Jyslin and took her hand. "Thanks, Merra," he said as she handed him a glass of _oye_ juice from a tray she was carrying. "Where's Seido?"

"Running a bit late at the restaurant," she replied. "She asked me to make you all some refreshments while she finishes up and heads home."

"You sure you're okay with filling in for Ayama and Surin while they're on vacation?"

"Of course I am," she smiled in reply. "I arranged a reduced schedule so I can be here to fill in when Seido's busy."

"Well, I'm sure we'll appreciate your cooking more than Ayama's," he replied lightly.

"Oh no, you're not going to start a war just before they leave and make me fight it when they get home," she protested. "Ayama made sure to restock _that_ spice rack before she leaves, and I have permission to use it."

That made him laugh brightly. "Then I'd say that meals around here next takir are going to be adventurous."

"Only yours, Dad," Shya stated. "We don't want anything to do with the _spice rack_."

"Truth," Rann agreed

"Hush, the match is about to start!" Jyslin demanded.

Merra handed out drinks to everyone and cleared out from in front of the vidlink just in time. Mrri had been here enough to know the rules of bachi, and she enjoyed watching the sport, so she was fully invested in the match, sitting on the back of the couch between Jason and Kreel. And it was a good match, both in that it was a nearly dramatic back and forth through the second half, and that the Paladins pulled it out with a 16-14 victory, clinching a playoff spot. Jason found it a little weird to watch his wife jumping up and down on the sidelines with the other players on the viddy while she pumped her fist in the air and gave out a whooping cry of victory on the couch…which had to be how a lot of other people felt when they saw Jason driving a bionoid with his real body close by. Jyslin nearly lost the merge in the celebratory hugs, which caused Jason to laugh when her bionoid on the viddy jerked a little bit and lost its coordination, but she quickly regained control of the merge. She made sure to pay everyone a little attention before she closed her eyes and fully committed to the merge, to deal with the post-match celebration in the locker room, press conference, and interviews.

After the match, he did do a tiny bit of business. He sat out on the deck with Mrri, the Pai sitting on the table rather than a chair, as Kreel hit the beach with a few of the kids. _[Sometimes I find it hard to believe he's one of the most dangerous rulers on the council,]_ Mrri communed impishly as they watched Kreel get mugged by several of the younger kids, because he stole their beach ball.

_[Don't ever let his attitude or his irreverence blind you to fact that Kreel is one of the most savvy politicians you'll ever see, Mrri,]_ he answered honestly. _[And the Grimja know it. He can only run for re-election and serve one more six-year term as High Councilor after this term ends, and there's some serious talk in the Union about changing the law to allow him to run for another term after that. But Kreel wouldn't allow it. As much as he'd love to serve beyond the three term limit, he's rightfully worried that someone not as gifted as he is somehow gets in and has an extra six years to run the Union into the ground in the future. Populist demagogues who are better at talking than leading are something of a recurring issue in the Union. That's why they instituted the term limit law in the first place.]_

_ [These democracies and republics are so…weird,]_ she complained. _[It's almost against the natural order.]_

_[Hey, watch it now,]_ he warned lightly in reply. _[If I could make the house a democracy or a republic, I would in a heartbeat. I believe they're the most effective forms of government. Unfortunately, the secrets we have to keep more or less require a Grand Duke to rule the house. There has to be someone ultimately responsible, someone that can be held accountable to keep the oaths of Karinne and who doesn't change with the next election.]_

_ [See, that's why we get along, you understand the reality of power,]_ she told him, giving him a sly look. She then laughed when he flicked his finger against her shoulder, nearly knocking her down.

_[Arrogant little kitties barely bigger than my tabi aren't allowed to have opinions,]_ he teased with a sly smile.

_[I may be small, but I can pick your butt up and toss you across the deck, Jayce,]_ she threatened, balling a tiny fist and shaking it in his general direction.

_[Damn heavy gravity species, you just ruin everything, you know that?]_

She laughed. _[It keeps you giants honest,]_ she replied. _[And reminds you that size isn't everything. Now, stop being a jerk and let's talk about the ridiculous deal that Kumi is trying to foist on us. I don't think she realizes that we can do math.]_

Jason laughed brightly. _[If she's trying to scam you, it means she likes you,]_ he grinned at her. _[She's a pirate at heart.]_

_ [Well, she can take her piracy and stuff it. My father would murder me if I ever sent a deal like that to his desk.]_

_ [That may be her plan,]_ he told her with a sly look. _[You drive Kumi up the wall, Mrri. She doesn't see how someone so adorable can be so viciously ruthless. It violates the foundations of her reality.]_

She gave a high-pitched, squeaky laugh._ [Are you making fun of me, Jason?]_

_ [Am I?]_ he countered with that same slight, sly smile.

_[I think you are. I may have to do something about that. And the first thing I'm going to do is take Kumi to the cleaners over this Letremite deal.]_

_ [Told you before, Mrri, if you can swindle Kumi, go for it. It keeps her on her toes.]_

_ [You could just order her to let me swindle her.]_

_ [Oh no, you have to work for it. And Kumi will definitely do that,]_ he replied.

They discussed the deal that Kumi and the Pai were trying to close—at least some realistic terms rather than what Kumi was trying to get away with—at least until Mrri got roped into playing with the kids and Kreel. And that in itself was often a lesson in how different other races and species could be. Mrri was only a shade over two shakra tall, three times smaller than Jason, yet she could lift nearly 220 konn in Karis' gravity…that was over twice Jason's weight. Her strength was absolutely nuts, a tiny thing that could pick up a small hoverbike, but in her own gravity, she was only slightly stronger than average for a Pai. Paian's gravity was the strongest known gravity that had developed an organized civilization at a nearly mind-boggling 17.6 standard, lethal to even most other heavy gravity species like the Faey and the Haumda. Of all known species, only the Drakk, Meroi, and Prakarikai could survive on Paian without an inducer. It was no surprise that all life on Paian was so small, because only such a small being could survive in gravity that heavy. The Pai were one of the _larger _species that lived on Paian, most life there was insect-sized. Mrri would need an inducer here just to walk if she wasn't specially trained to operate in light gravity, else she'd vault shakra into the air every time she tried to take a step. Pai were agile enough to learn how to walk in lighter gravity without an inducer, a technique they'd developed that involved flicking their tails downward when they generated upward force in their walking gait to generate downward force that kept them from lifting off the ground. It was a little funny to watch, but it worked.

Jason could almost imagine how hard it had been for the Pai to launch rockets off their world, before they came into contact with the Confederation and acquired grav engine technology. The amount of thrust they'd need to overcome Paian's insane 17.6 gravity to achieve escape velocity…he couldn't fathom how they did it using rockets that required conventional reaction fuels. And that was a fantastic indicator of just how smart the Pai were as a species. That they'd developed rocket technology capable of launching off a 17.6 gravity planet using only archaic chemical reaction engines…that was _impressive_. Just about any other species wouldn't have been able to figure it out, and would have been trapped on the planet.

Granted, Paian was rich in many chemical compounds that had significantly more kick than a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine used by the Terrans before the subjugation, but it was still a testament to Pai innovation that they managed to find those compounds and adapt them to use in rocket technology. Then build rockets to launch Pai into orbit without the launch killing them.

But then again, Pai were built for heavy gravity, so handling those crushing G-forces wasn't all that difficult for them.

Truly, the Pai were tiny, and they looked delicate and vulnerable, but they were, beyond doubt, one of the _toughest_ species in the universe.

But ultimately, as it always did, work found him. It was in the form of Siyhaa, contacting him over the biogenic network that she'd found something. Jason opted to talk to her face to face, so he excused himself from the beach, got dressed, and headed over to 3D, where she had her personal office…sort of. Siyhaa's office was the room holding the biogenic mainframe they used in 3D as a data processing node for Cybi, something of a _really_ external asset that was nevertheless directly tied to Cybi's I/O tree. Outside of Cybi, no other external asset could access the mainframe, a bit of computer wizardry that Siyhaa, Myleena, and Cybi cooked up a few years ago. All of 3D's most sensitive data was stored directly in Cybi's core, but their less secret data was kept in that mainframe. The large room held several different computers of various sizes and multiple architectures, which were Siyhaa's experiments and research units as she worked with the other commonly used computer architectures in the Confederation, as well as the Syndicate. The prototype of the newest iteration of a mesotronic computer they were going to sell to Dynamax was sitting on Siyhaa's desk, which was 31% faster and had 46% more storage capacity without increasing its size. The prototype on her desk was a handpanel model, built to almost exactly resemble the handpanels that were so common in the Confederation…just built for a Benga. All that extra size certainly gave the unit all kinds of extra space to buff it up, to the point where the "handpanel" on her desk that was nearly the size of an old-fashioned Terran flatscreen TV was nearly as powerful as the palm model of handpanel the Imperium used, the smallest handpanel commercially produced.

"I'm here, Hadjha," he called as he came in through the door and closed it, a door whose knob was at his chest. The door was built for a Moridon.

"At my desk, Jason," she called in answer. He had to walk nearly 70 shakra to reach her desk, which was near the center of the room. "You got here quickly."

"I wasn't doing much but sitting around," he said, getting in the "high chair" she kept for smaller races so they could sit more or less at eye level with her at her desk. "What did you dig up?"

"Much, and none of it good," she replied, tapping on her desk to put the room into secure mode, then she touched her interface and bought up a hologram from the room's emitters. "With the help of the Overseer, we've traced the flow of money through the Department of Farm Management, and it is as you suspected. There is rampant corruption within the department," she declared. "Tens of millions of credits are being embezzled from several funds the department manages on a yearly basis, and most of them involve the surviving farm workers."

"Okay, that's confirmation of what we suspected. Did you identify the perpetrator?"

"That was what made this difficult to trace, Jason. Whoever is doing this is clearly a professional, and whoever it is is _not_ within the department. The employees in on the scheme don't know the launderer's identity, they only know that they get a cut of the money he or she is stealing.. What's surprising is that only sixteen employees within the department are a part of it. They're all upper level managers, including the Secretary of the department, with the power to set rules the bureaucrats follow, who unwittingly helped conceal the scheme within a complex web of convoluted regulations."

"Okay, that's definitely not what I expected," Jason grunted. "You have names?"

"Yes, we have all the names, at least within the department. We still haven't tracked down who is behind the money laundering operation. Because of that, we need to hold off on breaking up the operation until after we find out who it is. If we move now, the person responsible for the laundering will disappear."

"I take it that was a request from the Overseer?"

She nodded, her horns bobbing. "He has agents from the Oversight Commission working on it."

"Then it won't take long."

She nodded again in silent agreement.

"Alright, I'll leave you to it, Hadjha," he declared. "Let me know when the Overseer lets us put a hand in. Think I'll check in with Miaari and see how her side of it's going."

In a word, slowly. Jason visited her office and was directed to her office, which she put in secure mode as soon as he stepped inside. That required him to speak Kimdori. "Just touching base on what you've found out from the Medical Service," he said as he approached her desk.

"Not much, but what we have found deeply disturbs me, cousin," she replied soberly as he sat down.

"Disturb how?"

"Something very big is going on over there," she told him. "And it's so secret, that even _we_ are having serious difficulty finding it."

He whistled. "What about the infiltrator sent in to lift info off Banlia?"

"So far, he hasn't been able to get anywhere near her," she told him. "The main administration building attached to the hospital annex in Dracora has the kind of security we encountered when we broke up that cloning operation the IBI was running, Jason," she told him. "They're using the kind of biometric locks that not even a shapeshifted Kimdori can get past, since we can't perfectly mimic the specific DNA of an individual's shape who we hold. Twice, our specialist was nearly discovered, and only his quick thinking allowed him to evade capture. What he's learned is that the entire east wing of the admin building is outfitted with similar IBI-level security. Biometric locks, extremely sophisticated sensors and scanners, roving patrols, both physical and biometric security on every computer terminal in the wing, and he's learned that there's a mainframe in the building that has no connection whatsoever to Civnet or any other computer, and is only accessible by a small number of terminals in rooms with heavy security. It is a _cold_ system. You should understand exactly what you keep on a cold system, Jayce."

"3D's mainframe is a cold unit, so I know damn well," he said with a grunt, leaning forward and putting his elbows on her desk. "But the question we have to ask is, what on earth would the _Medical Service_ need with a cold mainframe?"

"That is the question, cousin, and the hidden answer has piqued Denmother's curiosity. She's put her own hand in. Me and Jinaami are no longer running the operation."

"Ouch," he grunted. "That's not entirely fair."

"On the contrary, cousin, we don't see it as a reprimand. And with _Denmother_ commanding the operation, its success is not in any doubt. She is as far above us as I am above you. In a Gamekeeper sense," she added with a slight smile.

"Arrogant puppy," he teased, which made her chuckle. "What I'm surprised over is that the Kimdori didn't already know about all of this."

"It's the _Medical Service_, Jason," she said simply. "I fault Jinaami in no way in not knowing about this before this came to light. The Medical Service has been a benign, open, forthright organization for nearly six thousand years. There's no _need_ to keep eyes on them. Or there wasn't until now," she amended.

"One thing's for certain. I don't think that the medical files of the survivors have anything to do with that mainframe. I think we stumbled across sleeping prey while searching for a bone, cousin," he said, using a Kimdori idiom. "And the irony is, if they'd have just given us the information we wanted from the start, they wouldn't have incited us to start digging."

"I think that's a valid argument. I disagree with it, but it's valid," she replied.

"You're wrong. If the survivors had something to do with it, their files would have never been in the part of their system that has access to Civnet in the first place," he countered. "Banlia should have seen this coming. She knew I wanted those files when I asked Songa to get them, she should have known that my connections to the Kimdori would have caused me to go after them the hard way."

"Perhaps she believed that you would never dare raise your hand against the Medical Service."

"I'm not a Faey," he said bluntly. "And speaking of the files, any luck there?"

She shook her head. "But with Denmother overseeing things, I'm sure we'll have them very soon."

"Alright then," he said, standing up. "Keep me up to date, cousin. I'm going to go back home. It's almost dinnertime."

"Alright, cousin. Don't get too drunk tonight."

"That'll be Jyslin, not me," he chuckled.

_Kaista, 10 Shiaa , 4408, Faey Orthodox Calendar_

_ Friday, 15 July 2022 Terran Standard Calendar_

_ Kaista, 10 Shiaa, year 1333 of the 97__th__ Generation, Karinne Historical Reference Calendar_

_The White House, Karsa, Karis_

This was _nuts_.

Just barely avoiding getting his furry ass cooked by a blast of fire, Jason—or Blackfang at the moment—performed a water skiiing slalom maneuver to avoid a cone of fire unleashed by a flying drake holding two Kanlon riders on his flying disc, then rotated on it and chanted the words of power to the Lightning Bolt spell. The spell went off before they flew out of range, which blasted the rear seat rider off the back of the drake, his body falling to the sea below.

This was the final battle of the Grand Crusade, the first of the battles fought, and it had only just begun…and _wow_ did it start hard and heavy. They'd had no idea the Kanlon had flying mounts, and certainly nothing as large or as dangerous as drakes. Drakes were very small cousins of dragons in the game, not very smart but equipped with breath weapons, and that made them very nasty. They had two riders on each, one guiding the drake and the other an archer or mage, who was attacking the Drakkin and mages like him, who were riding on flying discs. The drakes were protecting a vast armada of hundreds of Kanlon ships below, who were sailing for Freeport harbor.

He'd almost missed this. He was almost rude to the council when he bailed on them halfway through a rather important meeting just so he could log on in time to participate in the first of the final Grand Crusade battles. But it wasn't all purely for selfish reasons. Kevin was going to be in this fight, and Cyvanne had strongly hinted that he really wanted to be here to see him shine.

He was certainly…doing something. Instead of waiting at the dock like all the other warrior types, he was out here instead, on a ship directly below him, fighting his way across the deck by himself. And man, he was kicking some major ass, demonstrating just how lethal someone with skills as high as his could be. The NPC Kanlon he came up against were absolutely no match for him, and he was mowing them down left and right as he seemed to be fighting to reach the steering deck…to kill the captain, maybe?

The guy Jason knocked off the drake nearly hit him when it fell the long distance down to the ship, and then Jason had to deal with another drake and riders that were banking towards him. He held his "ground" as it were and chanted the words of power to another Lighting Bolt spell, and he released it just as the drake started to turn to give the man in the back seat a clear line of sight on him with his crossbow. The bolt hit the drake in the head, and much to Jason's surprise, it killed it. The riders were flung from the saddle when the drake plummeted towards the ocean below.

Jason nearly winced and knelt down in sudden concern when the drake he felled landed on the ship Kevin was on! It smashed through the deck and made the ship buck wildly, rolling and causing the stern to rise up out of the water and rotate from the impact, then it slammed back to the water and immediately began to sink.

He nearly got Kevin killed…Cyvanne was probably going to whack him for that.

He forgot about that quickly enough, because it was way too crazy up here to watch what Kevin was doing. Their job was to try to clear out the drakes so they could attack the ships, and they had to do it because any mage or Drakkin that descended low enough to have range on the ships was swarmed by several drakes, leading to almost instant death. He had to keep an eye on his flying disc, since it only lasted about five minutes at Jason's current skill level in Conjuration, so he had to recast that spell often to keep the disc from vanishing and sending him plummeting to the ocean below.

_Rita_ gave him that spell, and 13 others. They were delivered by a mail page a few days ago when he logged on to move his character to Freeport so he'd be in place to fight in the final battle. She'd scribed the spells and mailed them to him, which she could do because he'd given them his avatar's name when he talked to them. That was very thoughtful, and he really appreciated it, since she'd sent him spells he didn't have. He could use all of them. The Flying Disc spell was usually a spell that only dropped in raids, and she'd made a copy of that spell and over a dozen other spells that also only dropped from raids and sent them to him.

Well, he did give her half a million credits, the money she was due that had been withheld from her, so he guessed in a way he paid for them…using real life money.

It certainly came in handy now, because it allowed him to engage the drakes with the other mages that had the spell and the Drakkin, doing more than just standing at the docks waiting to do something. That was probably why Kevin was also out here, because standing there waiting sucked when you'd been looking forward to this for nearly two takirs.

But this wasn't a cakewalk battle. Hundreds of Drakkin and mages were killed as they struggled to clear the drakes to reach the fleet, and Jason was almost ashamed that he was one of them. That would usually force him to make the "run of shame" back to his corpse, but he had a fairly rare spell of his own that allowed him to summon his corpse to him at the graveyard. It was his most valuable spell, and had cost him his entire gold savings when he saw it for sale in a player market, because it only dropped from the higher tier raids. The seller had scribed it and was selling copies…for 50,000 gold a pop. But Jason was willing to pay that price because that spell would save him tons of time and frustration running back to his corpse from the graveyard. It was a highly coveted spell because if you died in a place that was infested by monsters, or in a place like deep inside a cave system, it was often difficult to get back to your corpse and get your stuff back. Many players kept a set of "corpse run" gear in the bank, usually made up of the gear they'd most recently replaced in every slot with new gear, which would give them the ability to fight their way to their corpse and get back their top-tier gear. Jason felt that 50,000 gold was a justifiable expense for a spell that would save him potentially hours of time getting his corpse back, for his playtime was precious to him and he didn't want to waste it doing a corpse run.

It took him nearly two takirs of continual practice to raise his Necromancy high enough to use the spell, but this situation right here, where he'd have to try to go through a war zone to reach his corpse, made it worth the effort.

He ended up staying at the docks, because by the time he got rebuffed and back to the front lines, the Kanlon were invading the Harbor District. He landed on a roof with some archers and another mage and they did what they could to slow down the advance, but it was clear very quickly that things were getting out of control. The Kanlon were very smartly tying their ships up together so they could unload large numbers of troops at once, them coming in huge, coordinated waves, and between each wave was an almost uncountable number of Sahaugin climbing up the docks and rushing into the city, and that pushed the defenders off the docks, then steadily back through the Harbor District. Jason and the others had to move to another rooftop almost every three minutes to keep from getting behind the front line.

_[What the hell did you do, woman?]_ Jason complained to Cyvanne as he ended up crossing Sea Spray Boulevard, which separated the Harbor District from the Trades District.

_[Whatever do you mean?]_

_ [Are we supposed to lose this battle?]_ he asked caustically. _[There's too many of the to fight off!]_

_ [Then I guess their raid leaders aren't all that smart,]_ she replied smugly. _[The battle is winnable, but not by morons.]_

_ [Girl, you have turned into _such_ a bitch,]_ he accused as he tossed a fireball into a throng of Sahaugin, which then exploded and killed most of them.

Jason was seriously starting to think that they were going to lose this battle when he ended up standing on the walls of Falcon's Roost, the fortress in the Military District overlooking the harbor, which was considered the heart of Freeport. If the Kanlon took Falcon's Roost, they could easily take the rest of the city.

But then something completely unexpected happened. A bunch of Djinn seemed to come out of nowhere, hundreds of them, and they formed three rings over Falcon's Roost and started casting a spell. What was going on? He had no idea the Djinn were allies of the Golden Lion faction…that had to be specific to this server. Each server was different because the actions of the players caused different things to happen on different servers. Well, Djinn were powerful NPCs, so whatever they were about to do, it would no doubt help quite a bit.

He was in no way prepared for what happened. And he doubted anyone else was, either.

The Djinn had a _game-changing_ impact on the battle. They summoned some kind of swirling vortex of magic high over the city, and then it cast a beam of magical energy down on the tallest tower of Falcon's Roost. That glow quickly spread over the fortress, then over the city, and in a matter of moments, it was covering the entire city.

Oddly, the glow also covered over all the humans of Freeport, causing them to rise into the air, held aloft by the magic.

Jason then found himself trying to not fall over the parapet when an earthquake struck the city, shaking the walls, shaking the fortress, shaking the city. He saw a small building in the Trades District collapse from the shaking, and he realized that it was the Djinn doing it. The humans hovering made sense now, the Djinn were protecting them from the shaking by lifting them into the air…but didn't do it for anyone else, which was a bit, well, _rude_.

Then, from his vantage point on the wall, he saw something he wasn't going to forget anytime soon.

The entire city began to _rise up from the ground_.

At first he couldn't understand what he was seeing, but he could tell after hearing the sound of tearing rock and seeing the horizon shift that the entire city was starting to rise up from its bed. Several more buildings collapsed as the shaking got intense, then it settled down to a minor temblor once the city tore completely free of the ground below and rose up. What the _fuck_ was this about?

The city rose up over a kathra, and then it came to a slow stop, the vortex of magic still high over the city after the beam of light faded. The humans were put back where they started, and there was nearly a stunned silence and a stop to the battle raging in the city.

When he had a moment to think about it, he understood why it was done. When they lifted the city off the ground, they made sure that no more Kanlon or Sahaugin could get into the city. And when the harbor drained of its water, it swept all the Kanlon ships out with it, leaving only the enemies currently in the city to deal with…and they had no way down. Even if they took the city, they would slowly starve to death up here, given the Djinn left the city where it was. If they took the city, the Djinn could just end the magic making it float, which would kill them all when the city crashed back to the ground below.

The battle was over, and while the Golden Lion might not win this battle, the Kanlon had most certainly lost it.

It took nearly another hour for the battle to conclude, with the players coming out victorious. Jason managed to get into a position where he could eavesdrop on the human king and Djinn ruler talking after the fighting, and he was quite surprised to find out that the city would remain floating in the city, and that all humans from Freeport had been granted the Djinn's ability to fly.

So _that_ was the new human racial ability! That was pretty cool!

After it was all over and he logged out, he found himself looking at the nearly eager face of Cyvanne. She'd brought her bionoid to the office while he was in the battle. "So, was that cool or what?" she asked expectantly.

"You must have a master plan," I accused.

"Sure do," she grinned. "But was it cool? Tell me it was cool, I thought it was cool!"

"Calm down, goof," he chided, which made her laugh. "Yes, the battle was very cool, and the Djinn came completely out of left field."

"For you. For some players, it didn't at all," she told him. "Those who know what's really going on."

"So, what's the master plan?"

"It's the first step in the release of the next expansion," she replied. "The Grand Crusade was the first pre-expansion event, setting things up for the expansion. That vortex over Freeport is the gateway to the plane of Air. There will be three more events that will open the other three, and when all four are up, the Elemental Planes will be accessible for players."

"Oh. Ohhhh," he breathed. "Very clever!"

She gave him a broad smile.

"So, is that it for the Kanlon?"

"No. There will be more pre-expansion events involving the Kanlon, and it'll stretch into the new expansion to become a major campaign that all players can do. They'll want their revenge, after all. The ongoing war with the Kanlon will give players who aren't ready for the elemental planes something important to do that will reward them with some good quality gear that will help them get to the Citadel, because the planes will only be for endgame players, at the absolute minimum able to clear dungeons on the Citadel. So there's going to be a major pre-expansion storyline with both the Kanlon and the Salamanders that will expand up to Netherim, and will eventually lead up to another continent on both Arcavia and Netherim being opened to the players. We're introducing six new player factions and twenty-four new races that populate the new continents, and also a bunch of new skills, items, spells, and tons of other stuff."

"Anything big?"

"We're nerfing the difficulty of research and scribing, to make them easier. We're not too happy with how rare some spells are, especially since those spells are going to be very important once players reach the elemental planes. Some spells take such a high research skill to discover it's making them far too rare, way too many spells haven't even been discovered yet, and too many raid spells have way too high of a scribing skill requirement to copy. There are still over four hundred spells that no player has managed to discover through research, even after nearly three years, so clearly there's a failure in the research system. So reworking research is definitely at the top of the list."

"I'm happy to hear that," he chuckled. "And if you want a suggestion from a player that uses research, _please_ make it less boring," he told her. "Reading the books about magical theory and magical interaction with the physical world is fun for the first five hundred points or so of the skill, but then it gets boring and repetitive. It's the least fun skill in the game to practice in my opinion, but I struggle through it because it's so important."

"That's good feedback," she said professionally. "I'll see what I can do to make the dusty magical tomes more engaging, make research more fun. Maybe I'll add an active laboratory component where you do magical experiments," she mused.

"Well, it sounds pretty good, Cyvanne," he told her. "I'm looking forward to seeing it. Now, did you mirror the new spells I have and the skillups I got over to Primus?"

"Yes, I did," she replied, almost tartly. "You want me to delete your toon on Methrian?"

"Not yet, I may need to talk to Kevin or Rita again," he answered. "Besides, I think I'd like to watch what's going on in Freeport on Methrian for a little while and see how things turn out, see how much different it will be from the Freeport on Primus. I get the feeling that the city's going to change a whole lot in the next few months."

"Yup, but I won't spoil it," she nodded. "You _might_ want to think about buying some property in Freeport on Primus, Jason," she said lightly. "You're on the faction, so they'll sell it to you. They'll charge you more than a human, but they'll sell to you."

"I bet that's gonna happen on every server," he chuckled. "Since I'm guessing that the city getting pulled out of the ground and the vortex thing is going to happen on every server."

She nodded. "Freeport's going to change a lot over the next few months, but how it's going to change is going to be a little different on each server," she told him. "The Djinn are going to establish a presence in the city, they're going to be an NPC ally of the Golden Lion faction, and it's going to attract a lot of new NPC merchants. The more important people will be a whole ton of NPC mage archetypes who will come to study the magic keeping the city floating. Their work will have an influence on how players operate in the elemental planes."

"And why will they be different?"

"That'll depend on what the players do in the city after the Grand Crusade ends," she replied. "Where the Djinn build their enclave and where the mages move in and set up will depend on where the available real estate is, so the Freeport on every server will be slightly different as those new groups move in and start building things. For example, a large contingent of high elven mages from the Nine Circles are going to move to Freeport and establish a new permanent base, so they can study the magic coming from the plane of Air. They'll eventually start a new magical academy to teach humans magic, since their connection to the plane of Air increased their magical potential."

"You mean flying isn't the only racial they got?"

She shook her head. "As they level up Gift of the Djinn, it will unlock new child skills and abilities. At 500 skill, they gain an ability called Wind Breath, which lets them blow out a strong breeze that can break up gas clouds and gaseous attacks, or blow away small objects and whatnot. It doesn't do any damage, but it can be useful for a clever player. The skill has a hard cap on how strong a wind the player can create so that it can't get so strong that it can deal real damage, but a clever player can find a way for it to be an offensive weapon. That's how we set it up. When they reach 1,000, they gain a skill that increases the damage they deal using magic that creates or uses lightning, whether it's generated by a spell or a skill, or even an item they use like the Rod of Lightning. They can't create the lightning themselves, but they can enhance it. At 1,500, they gain the ability to deal electric damage by touch, an ability we've conditionally named Jolt, and that _does_ get enhanced by their increased lightning damage skill. That's a child skill, and once they level it up pretty high, it can deal some respectable damage. When they get that skill over 1,000, they gain the ability to project it short distances, up to a maximum of about ten meters. Jolt also gives the human a damage reduction bonus against lightning used against them, reflecting their growing connection to lightning magic. When they reach 2,000 skill in Jolt, the player becomes completely immune to lightning damage. And when they get Gift of the Djinn to 2,000, they gain the ability to pass into the plane of Air through the vortex above Freeport without having to use a spell or item."

"Setting it high so only high skill players can get there easily," Jason mused.

"Yup," she nodded. "But the humans won't be the only ones to get something new We identified the four least played races in the game and we gave each one new skills using the same general gist of the humans. We put four legendary skills into the game that only the target race can learn, each one infusing the player with the magic of one of the four races of genies. Djinn, Efreeti, Dao, Marid, air, fire, earth, and water. Those four races are the keys to unlocking the elemental planes as the player that got the Legendary skill skills it up and gains mastery over it. Kevin has the air skill, Touched by the Djinn, and he was the key to the Djinn aiding Freeport in the battle. On the other servers, the human that has the skill will be the key to their Freeports being raised out of the ground. The Selkies in the Covenant faction have Touched by the Marid. The Utaku in the Dark Sun faction on Netherim have Touched by the Dao, and the Saberak in the Bloody Skull faction on Netherim have Touched by the Efreet. This way, we're buffing the lesser played races to make them more attractive, and we're also advancing the overall storyline in a way that keeps the players very much involved, so they feel that their decisions have real impact and ramifications in their game world."

"That's pretty damn clever," Jason complemented, which made her smile.

"I thought you'd like it."

"I do, I just wish I had more time to enjoy it," he chuckled. "Since I've used up almost all my free time, I have to get the paperwork done before I go home."

"I'll leave you to it," she said.

"Gee, thanks."

"Your job, your paperwork," she winked.

"Bite me, Cyvanne."

"Let me bring my giruzi bionoid over from Kosiningi and I'll fulfill that request," she teased.


End file.
